Theresa May lets Donald Trump off the hook over far right tweets

The PM is taking a different approach to the cabinet minister who said he would ‘refuse to let it go'.

When Donald Trump recently promoted propaganda videos from a British far-right extremist group, Theresa May said the president was “wrong”.

But not wrong enough to raise the issue with him in person, it seems.

In their first conversation since last month's diplomatic spat, the prime minister and the president discussed Brexit and events in the Middle East. But a summary of the pre-Christmas call put out by Number 10 made no mention of Trump's apparent endorsement of inflammatory tweets posted by the deputy leader of Britain First.

Naturally, Jeremy Corbyn accused May of squandering an opportunity to take on Trump.

“She seems to have failed to use the opportunity to call him out for retweeting abhorrent Islamophobic material. As prime minister, May has a responsibility to stand up against hate and for all communities in our country,” said a spokesperson.

Conservative MPs have held back from criticising their leader in public, but senior figures such as communities secretary Sajid Javid may well have been hoping that May would take a tougher stance.

Javid previously went further than the prime minister when he hit out at the president for endorsing a “vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me”.

And speaking a month before the prime minister said nothing about it in her phone call to Trump, he added: “He is wrong and I refuse to let it go and say nothing.”